Grail quest

The Grail is a powerful symbol in a number of traditions, including that of the body of the earth mother (as a cup of plenty and regeneration, preserving the life of the world) and in Christianity, as the cup offered to the disciples by Christ at the Last Supper and which symbolically (and possibly, after the crucifixion, in fact) held his blood, shed for the washing of souls and making them sinless. The Grail is also seen as the gate to paradise, a means of contact with the spiritual and said to be infallible in healing sickness. The most popular and well known myth is that of the quest for the Grail undertaken by the Knights of King Arthur's Round Table, seen to symbolize the search for unity with God and similar to the alchemical search for the philosopher's stone. There is no doubt a link at some level with the human skull from which Kali, the Hindu goddess drinks (the English word "cup" and the numerous words in many languages containing the root "cap" where the meaning is related to an actually or symbolic head all come from the Sanskrit word for skull); and also with the vessels of transformation in Tibetan Buddhism which are represented by human skulls.

Carl Jung indicated that the Grail is clearly a symbol of our times, with its emphasis on the search for the truth, for the real self. As in the legend of the wounded king whose land is laid waste until the Grail is recovered and cures him, so the individual may see him or herself as spiritually in a waste land on a spiritual quest to rediscover the Grail, be healed and restored. In the Arthurian legends, it is the spiritually pure, those who are above the level of the senses, who succeed in this quest.